Event Horizon - Black Hole Live

[Nom de ploom]

Guvernator said:

p1stonhead said:

MartG said:

Disgusting but not surprising stuff about useless people who could never get a girl due to living in their mum's basement being annoyed about a girl getting credit for stuff

Not surprising in the least.

You know what, occasionally I think that gender politics has gotten a bit too militant these days, the media are too gung-ho, too many SJW's shouting and over exaggerating the problem. Then I read crap like this and realise despite all the progress we've made, there are still far too many angry little men who are scared about the rise in woman's power and equality.

you might be giving them too much credit. I doubt the diatribe and deflection from the role a young woman has made to this project has anything to do with real social justice.


when the actual people involved in this keep saying "it's a team project" and keyboard cowboys still don't hear it, they are beyond reason already sadly.

[Eric Mc]

dukeboy749r said:

I thought a Black Hole was actually a sphere? If so, why would the orbiting material form a disc? and if it does, in which plane would it form?

It's a natural consequence of material orbiting a spinning mass. It's the same reason why planetary discs form. Even if the material started off as a spherical cloud surrounding the central mass - eventually, over time, the sphere of matter settles into a disc shape.

It's also the process that gives rise to proto-planetary discs around new stars - which discs end up being the planets orbiting that star.

And the same process that creates spiral or elliptical galaxies.

[AshVX220]

So the planets of our solar system orbit the Sun on the same plane? Is the angle of that plan dictated by the angle/direction of the Sun's spin?

[Eric Mc]

AshVX220 said:

So the planets of our solar system orbit the Sun on the same plane? Is the angle of that plan dictated by the angle/direction of the Sun's spin?

The original cloud that started the solar system off had a single rotational direction. Over millions of years, this rotating sphere of matter flattened out to form a disc - expect at the very centre where the bulk of matter settled into a spherical shape and eventually underwent a fusion moment and became a star. Meanwhile further out, the disc became more pronounced. Within that disks there were spherical clumps which eventually formed planets and moons.

We seem the same process operate at lots of different scales - from galactic discs with globular centres (which almost always contain a black hole at their centre), to solar system type discs down to individual planetary bodies with discs of dust and gas.

The bulk of planetary bodies and moons within the solar system do follow a unidirectional traffic pattern on a level plane. There are some exceptions however.

[Jinx]

AshVX220 said:

So the planets of our solar system orbit the Sun on the same plane? Is the angle of that plan dictated by the angle/direction of the Sun's spin?

Well essentially yes but only because they kicked poor Pluto out of the planet club:

[Eric Mc]

It's one of the reasons why Pluto was reclassified. Almost be definition, a planet orbits in the same plane as the other planets. However, even that is a bit arbitrary - we even know now that there are wandering planets that drift between the stars. It's most likely that such planets were once well behaved members of their own solar system but due to some gravitational interaction with another body, had themselves flung out of their solar system.

In our own solar system we have a number of moons which circle their parent planets "the wrong way" - these are likely to have been captured by the parent planet long after the planet and its original moons had been formed.

[Jinx]

Eric Mc said:

It's one of the reasons why Pluto was reclassified. Almost be definition, a planet orbits in the same plane as the other planets. However, even that is a bit arbitrary - we even know now that there are wandering planets that drift between the stars. It's most likely that such planets were once well behaved members of their own solar system but due to some gravitational interaction with another body, had themselves flung out of their solar system.

In our own solar system we have a number of moons which circle their parent planets "the wrong way" - these are likely to have been captured by the parent planet long after the planet and its original moons had been formed.

Should have demoted all the other planets instead for not sitting in the same plane as Pluto Planet Earth you say? Nope merely a large watery dwarf planet - some offshoot from the main asteroid belt......

[Eric Mc]

Let's not get into yet another "Pluto Status" discussion. They've been done to death here and elsewhere.

The chat was about why material orbiting a central body has a tendency to form into a disc shape.

[Colonel D]

Forgive my ignorance if this is stupid.
Now they've discovered this black hole can it be followed/observed from here on? Meaning we get to follow it as it moves along, seeing if it encounters a star big enough for us to see, and what happens when they come together.

I'm struggling to understand this as it is but fascinated at the same time.

[Terminator X]

Nom de ploom said:

I'm with Eric on this.

if we all had the interest and attention span of some posters on here we would have never even looked up at the stars in wonder and we'd be looking for the next piece of instant gratification.

This image is just as important as the first sighting of Saturns' rings, of Titan's "volcanoes" or the Hubble deep field observations.

The "meh" comments seem to be the minority though.

TX.

[Eric Mc]

Colonel D said:

Forgive my ignorance if this is stupid.
Now they've discovered this black hole can it be followed/observed from here on? Meaning we get to follow it as it moves along, seeing if it encounters a star big enough for us to see, and what happens when they come together.

I'm struggling to understand this as it is but fascinated at the same time.

This particular black hole lives at the centre of a fairly large elliptical galaxy p- so it won't be hard to follow. All we have to do is locate the galaxy - which is easily spotted with the right type of telescopic equipment - and that's where the black hole will be.

[Colonel D]

Eric Mc said:

This particular black hole lives at the centre of a fairly large elliptical galaxy p- so it won't be hard to follow. All we have to do is locate the galaxy - which is easily spotted with the right type of telescopic equipment - and that's where the black hole will be.

I'm starting to see the significance now, it will be interesting to see what follows over time.

[Eric Mc]

It's pretty much expected that all galaxies have a massive black hole at their centres - including our own. The trick that this team had was that they identified the type of galaxy and the nearest one of that type where it might be possible to see into the heart of the galaxy and thereby image the black hole at the centre. The galaxy in Andromeda (M31) , for example, is quite a bit closer to us but the angle at which we see it and the amount of dust it contains would make its black hole much more difficult to spot.

It was also known that this galaxy had a huge jet shooting out of its centre, which is a sure sign that there is a powerful black hole at work in the centre of the galaxy.

Over the next few years I fully expect that other black holes in other galactic centres will be imaged.,

[Bill]

Eric Mc said:

It was also known that this galaxy had a huge jet shooting out of its centre, which is a sure sign that there is a powerful black hole at work in the centre of the galaxy.

How does that work if nothing can escape a black hole?

[AshVX220]

Firstly, thanks to the replies to my questions on this thread and others. I know I could google the questions I have, but that would return a ton of options and many of those may not be written in ways I understand. The knowledge in this forum is fantastic and they way those knowledgeable people convey that information is easy for a layman like me to understand.

Secondly, do we think Black Holes only exist at the centre of galaxies, or is there evidence/a theory that they may exist in other parts of a galaxy? Is a Black Hole to a Galaxy what the Sun is to our Solar System only? is it only the Black Hole that keeps a Galaxy together?

Finally, back to the disks of matter orbiting things, does this mean that given enough time, the matter around Saturn (for example) would eventually form more moons? It seems an obvious conclusion to me.

[budgie smuggler]

Bill said:

How does that work if nothing can escape a black hole?

It's from matter outside the event horizon being accelerated to very high (close to light) speed.

[Eric Mc]

AshVX220 said:

Firstly, thanks to the replies to my questions on this thread and others. I know I could google the questions I have, but that would return a ton of options and many of those may not be written in ways I understand. The knowledge in this forum is fantastic and they way those knowledgeable people convey that information is easy for a layman like me to understand.

Secondly, do we think Black Holes only exist at the centre of galaxies, or is there evidence/a theory that they may exist in other parts of a galaxy? Is a Black Hole to a Galaxy what the Sun is to our Solar System only? is it only the Black Hole that keeps a Galaxy together?

Finally, back to the disks of matter orbiting things, does this mean that given enough time, the matter around Saturn (for example) would eventually form more moons? It seems an obvious conclusion to me.

It is expected the centre of all galaxies contain a very large black hole. They are the gravitational points that hold the whole conglomeration of stars together.

Any star over a certain mass is likely to collapse into a black hole as it approaches the end of its life i.e. it has run out of fuel to keep the nuclear fusion process running. Therefore, it is almost definite that galaxies contain millions of such black holes which orbit the galactic centre - just as they did when they were shining stars.

Regarding rings around planets - these all orbit their parent planet within a radius called the Roche Limit. This is a zone around a planet where the gravitational pull of the planet creates a tidal effect on the matter which prevents it from clumping together to form larger bodies such as decent sized moons - so the matter stays diffuse and spread out.